Easy Vanilla Cupcakes!
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A staple for any household – delicious, moist & light vanilla cupcakes with a creamy vanilla buttercream frosting!
Easy vanilla cupcakes
I love cupcakes and I love all different sorts of flavours and decorations, but I realised that I had never posted my easy vanilla cupcake recipe with pictures and method! Shock and horror!! This obviously had to change very rapidly, so here it is!
Cupcake sponges
A sponge like this is super basic, but it’s classic. It’s meant to have few ingredients, yet work together to create a beautifully light sponge that can be used for so many other cupcakes. The basic ingredient rules of a vanilla cupcake are:
- Butter – For a cupcake sponge, you can use either a baking spread, or unsalted butter. People have different preferences, but for a simple sponge like this I tend to use a baking spread
- Sugar – For a vanilla cupcake, I would always use caster sugar. You want a white sugar so it doesn’t impact the colour, fluffiness or flavour of the sponge.
- Flour – I always use self raising flour, but you can make your own by adding 2 level tsps of baking powder to 150g of plain flour, and whisking in before using in the recipe
- Eggs – when making a simple sponge like this the amount of eggs can vary. I tend to stick to 3 medium eggs for 150g of other ingredients, but its best to weigh the eggs in shells before using, and then match the weights of the butter, sugar and flour to that weight.
- Flavour – obviously, vanilla. I use pods, paste or extract – I will never touch essence.
Frosting
When it comes to the frosting on a cupcake like this, I often go for the American buttercream style frosting as it really is so easy to make.
- Butter – In my opinion, you must ALWAYS use block butter when making buttercream. A spread is not butter, and often results in an unpleasant frosting. Let it come to room temperature and then beat like crazy
- Sugar – icing sugar is always what you need in a buttercream, beat it into the butter like crazy again and you will have a basic buttercream
- Vanilla – obviously, as these are vanilla flavoured, I added some vanilla to the buttercream as well.
If you want a frosting that is slightly different however, you can do cream cheese frosting, or a Swiss meringue buttercream – both work well when vanilla flavoured, and they all bring different elements.
Adaptable recipe
These cupcakes are always a hit with anybody who eats them, doesn’t matter what age or gender, normal vanilla cupcakes absolutely rule all! You can keep them as simple as you like or you can jazz them up with pretty colourful sprinkles or some beautiful baking cups like my photos!
Along with my chocolate cupcakes recipe, I have used these for years and have never changed them – they’re absolutely failproof in my eyes! (And they’re super addictive – I always want vanilla cupcakes when im hungry). I even have a vegan version, and a gluten free version of these too!
Other cupcake recipes
I love basic baking, and these are definitely perfect for that. Delicious moist cupcakes with a hint of vanilla, dolloped and piped with a tonne of delicious creamy vanilla frosting… heaven.
I have tonnes of cupcake recipes on my blog, some of my favourites being my red velvet cupcakes, Biscoff cupcakes, lemon drizzle cupcakes, and my Oreo cupcakes… so I hope these make a great addition! Enjoy!
Easy Vanilla Cupcakes!
Ingredients
Cupcakes
- 150 g unsalted butter (or baking spread)
- 150 g caster sugar
- 3 medium eggs
- 150 g self raising flour
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp whole milk (optional)
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
- 150 g unsalted butter (room temp)
- 350 g icing sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2-4 tbsp whole milk (optional)
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Preheat your oven to 170ºC/160ºC fan and line a 12 hole muffin tray with large cupcake cases/muffin cases.
- Cream together the unsalted butter and caster sugar with an electric beater until smooth.
- Add in the eggs, self raising flour and vanilla extract and beat again for about about 20-30 seconds on a medium speed - it really doesn't take too long, you don't want to over beat it!
- Scoop the mixture evenly into your cases and bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes, or until cooked through! Leave to cool fully on a wire rack.
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
- Beat the softened unsalted butter until smooth - this can take a couple of minutes.
- Add in the icing sugar 1/3 at a time, making sure the sugar is fully incorporated until moving on!
- Once all of the icing sugar is in the frosting mix, keep on beating the frosting and add the vanilla extract whilst doing so.
- Once combined, add your frosting to a large piping bag with a piping tip of your choice.
- Decorate your cupcakes however you like (I use lots and lots of sprinkles!) and enjoy!
Notes
- These cupcakes are delicious as they are but you can jazz them up a bit with some chocolate chips - adding 100g to your mix will do nicely!
- These cupcakes will last in an airtight container for 2-3 days, or you can freeze them for up to 3 months!
- I used this Muffin Tin
- I use this 5cm scoop to portion into my baking cups
- I get my baking cups from here - Iced Jems
- I get my sprinkles from here - Iced Jems
ENJOY!
Find my other Recipes on my Recipes Page!
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J x
© Jane’s Patisserie. All images & content are copyright protected. Do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, please re-write the recipe in your own words and credit me, or link back to this post for the recipe.
Hi Jane I absolutely love these cupcakes and are amazing I adjusted to 200g and 4 eggs for bigger size as I always found the last 2 would be smaller running out of batter. My question is how would I adjust this for chocolate cupcakes. If using 200g how much SR and cocoa please
My cupcakes and cases have come out feeling and tasting rather greasy. Used exact measurements.
Hiya! What butter did you use? x
Hi Jane!!
I love this recipe!! I have made it multiple times. A few times recently I have noticed the cases start to peel from the cupcakes. I’ve considered it might be due to over/under baking but I’ve varied baking times and still get the same issue. Could it be something I’m doing wrong?
Thanks again for all your great recipes!
Hi Jane lovely cakes. Can I ask if I wanted to make this recipe eggless, how do I go about it or substitute with please?
Thanks
Hello! I have vegan version of this, so I recommend using that x
Hi Jane is it only unsalted butter you use in your sponge? Could baking spread / stork be used?
For the sponge I always use stork! x
I love this recipe!! Makes such fluffy cupcakes. I only want to make 6, woud love to know the measurements, especially for the egg 🙂
Personally for best results I would make 4 or 8 – and then use 1/3 or 2/3 of the recipe x
Hi what would the measurements be for the ingredients if I needed to make 18 cupcakes? Thankyou
I would use 1.5x the recipe x
These are amazing cupcakes I’ve got to make 3 lots of 12 (36)of these would I beable to triple the ingredients or double em to make 24 then just do a single 12
Yeah you can easily do a x2 batch or a x3 batch in one go! x
hi jane! i love this recipe and use it all the time, I have a question, if I froze a teaspoon of biscoff spread and put it in the cupcake, would it be okay or would it just sink to the bottom? i love your biscoff muffin recipe and wanted to have that in cupcake form, thankyou !!!
Normally for cupcakes I just add it in afterwards – but theoretically it may work the same! Just need smaller lumps of spread compared to the muffins x
Hey Jane!!
Love your website! I have made lots of your cupcakes recipes and love them!! I wondered why the radios of ingredients change? some are 175g of flour/sugar/ butter and 3 eggs others are 150g of flour/sugar/butter and 3 eggs? Hollie xx
150g is medium eggs, 175g is large eggs – just depends what I used at the time x
Love your recipes but trying to improve on my buttercream frosting.
Does it work ok with stork margarine or do I need to be using real butter?
Many thanks
It needs to be real block butter that is at room temperature – stork doesn’t work!
Hi, I’m not a massive fan of loads of buttercream, how much should I change the quantity of ingredients so that the cakes have a layer of buttercream but not a massive tower on top? X
It’s about proportions so reduce the recipe by 1/3 for example! x
I love your website amazing 💕
This is probably a silly question but how much do you fill the cupcake case with the mixture halfways or 3/4 ways ? I can never get an even level when baked? Thank you
I usually say 2/3-3/4 roughly but I use a 5cm scoop which is easiest! But you may try lowering the temp as well and baking for longer x
Thank you so much for the reply x
Hi Jane
If I was to bake them at 150 fan , how long would I bake them for ?
Thank you
Oh gosh I would imagine like 30 minutes? Not sure!!
Hi Jane, thank you for the tip on the scoop. How do I stop getting a dome on the cupcakes? Or what causes it ? A few times they have come out perfect and flat but other times a dome !
Thank you
Hey! Try baking it at a lower temperature but it can dome for a large variety of reasons xx
Hey! I’ve used this recipe but the icing seems too wet? Is there anything I can do to making it harder?
What exact butter did you use?
Hi can these be frozen? If so how long would you advise freezing cupcakes for? Thankyou d
Yes they can, and I usually say up to 3 months!
Hello,
I’m looking at doing cupcakes with two flavours.. outside vanilla and inside chocolate .. would this recipe work with just changing the vanilla for coco powder for half the mixture for the chocolate sponge centre ?
Thanks
Yes thats the easiest way xx
Hi Jane,
Just wondering can I adapt this to make small cupcakes ? Would oven and time be the same ?
Thanks
It depends on the size of the cupcakes, but if they are smaller they will take less time x